Be part of the conversation as more than 20nationally-recognized leaders in the Election Integrity Movement gather in Berkeley on October 7th & 8th to debate the issues, share ideas, solve problems, and create a strategy for the future. Take the opportunity to question these researchers and long-time activists and to participate in the discussions of possible solutions and the necessary steps to their attainment. There is much work to do, ideas to explore, strategy to map out. Join us in being part of this exciting process!

Get the Early Bird discount. Space is limited and the conference may sell out. Reserve your place before October 1, and get one day for $25 or both days for $40.Purchase Tickets Now.

Dr. Barbara Simons

Barbara Simons is a former President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the nation’s largest educational and scientific computing society. She is the only woman to have received the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering of U.C. Berkeley, where she earned her Ph.D. in computer science. A fellow of ACM and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she also received the Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award and the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award. An expert on electronic voting, she published Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?, a book on voting machines co-authored with Douglas Jones. She has been on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission since 2008, and she co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of Department of Defense’s Internet voting project (SERVE) in 2004 because of security concerns. She was a member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting, convened by President Clinton, that conducted one of the first studies of Internet Voting and produced a report in 2001. She co-authored the July 2015 report of the U.S. Vote Foundation entitled The Future of Voting: End-to-End Verifiable Internet Voting. She is retired from IBM Research.

Dr. Paul Thomas

Conference Discussion Topic:Ranked Choice Voting in Massachussetts

Dr. Paul Thomas (aka Lu Aptifer) is a Lead Organizer volunteering with Voter Choice Massachusetts to educate citizens about Ranked Choice Voting. After more than a decade of election integrity activism, he co-founded, and ​is now a ​former member of, Election Justice USA which during the 2016 Primary Elections formed to take testimony, report on, and help to, or litigate primary contests in Arizona, New York, and California. He wrote the Registration Tampering chapter of the widely distributed 100-page Election Justice USA report, “Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries” (https://goo.gl/n3i8Pm).

Lori Grace

Trust Vote, Founder

Conference Discussion Topic:TBA

Lori Grace has been active with Black Box Voting, Audit the Vote, Verified Voting, Protect Our Elections (protectourelections.org) and the Free Press since 2004. She founded the Institute for American Democracy and Election Integrity (www.trustvote.org) and has been working tirelessly for election integrity since 2004.

Peter Peckarsky

Intellectual Property Attorney

Conference Discussion Topic:The Unadjusted 2016 Exit Polls, Reducing Cybersecurity Risk, and A Waxman-Endorsed Proposal. The material at the website tab for “Research” and the top of the “Endorsement” tab will be discussed in his remarks.

Peter Peckarsky, an intellectual property attorney, … was born, raised, and graduated from high school in Milwaukee, WI. He received his S.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Political Science from MIT and his law degree from Case Western Reserve University.

Peter’s active involvement in electoral politics began before the 2002 general election when the Republicans announced their intent to prevent alleged “voter fraud” by placing observers in green vests in Milwaukee wards with a substantial African American population. Peter suggested the Democratic Party of Wisconsin organize lawyers to protect voters and their votes at voting sites and participated in those successful efforts on Election Day. Since then at every general election, the critical primaries, the Wisconsin recalls, and some Supreme Court races, he has participated actively in efforts to protect the vote in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

After the 2004 election, Peter served as lead trial counsel in a contest of the Presidential election in Ohio. He filed a motion which if granted would have put John Kerry in the White House.

In 2006, two co-authors and Peter published an article in which a Republican director of a county board of elections in Ohio admitted that an electronic vote counting system included many votes never lawfully cast in the total vote count reported for the 2004 Presidential election in his county.

In the 2008 Wisconsin primary, Peter and others organized and directed the election protection effort for Barack Obama.

In the 2016 Wisconsin primary, Peter helped run the Primary Day election protection effort for Bernie Sanders. On Election Day, Peter participated in the Clinton election protection effort. After Election Day, by serving as an attorney for the recount efforts of Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Peter tried to have an additional 46 electoral votes certified for Secretary Clinton which would have put her in the White House.

In 2017, Peter was one of eleven candidates for National Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee. When he withdrew from the race by endorsing Keith Ellison after voting started on the second ballot, the two remaining candidates were Keith Ellison and the winner, Tom Perez.

Stephanie Singer

Data Strategist

Conference Discussion Topic:

TBA

Stephanie Singer has assembled, analyzed and explained data for private business, public agencies, campaigns and election oversight. She works with Free & Fair, a new player in the election technology market bringing the best in computer security and high-assurance design to the voting process. From 2012-2016 she served on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections improving communication, modernizing processes, rooting out corruption and protecting voters’ rights. She won the post by defeating a 36-year incumbent in a citywide election. Singer co-chaired the statewide Election Reform Committee of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania and is an active member of the national Election Verification Network. Singer studied math and computer science at Yale and Stanford, earned a Ph.D. from New York University and has written two books on mathematical physics.

Dr. Robert J. Fitrakis

Conference Discussion Topic:
TBA

Bob Fitrakis is a lawyer, political author and writer, political candidate, and Professor of Political Science in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at Columbus State Community College. He has been the editor of the Columbus Free Press since 1993 and wrote extensively about the U.S. presidential election, 2004 and related 2004 U.S. election voting controversies. His latest work he co-authored with Harvey Wasserman, originally called “the Strip & Flip Selection of 2016”, was updated to “The Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections”.

John Brakey

AUDIT-AZ, Founder

Conference Discussion Topic:
Ballot Images

John R. Brakey is a longtime election transparency activist from Arizona who has specialized in electronic voting machine security and hacking issues for nearly two decades. His group, Americans United for Democracy Integrity and Transparency – AUDIT-AZ, a nonpartisan organization, has been involved with or filed numerous lawsuits that have challenged reported election results and illegal election procedures. It has exposed the problems with insiders and vendors due to the fact that our elections have been computerized, privatized and outsourced.

Presently, our focus is on solutions to make Elections Transparent, Track-able and Publicly Verified. The new digital technology which is fully capable of “… retains individual digital ballot images for auditing and adjudication” is being suppressed and destroyed. This tech is rapidly replacing the old “Mark Sense” optical scanners. The new Digital Image Scanners that count Hand Mark Paper Ballots produce ballot images that must be used to De-Corrupt our Democracy by: Link to paper:www.tinyurl.com/ybzjktjr

Lowell Finley

Former Calif Deputy Secretary of State for Election Systems

Conference Discussion Topic:
The Future of Elections

Lowell Finley is an attorney with a long history of involvement in election integrity issues. In 2003, he brought the first successful lawsuit against a voting system manufacturer—Diebold Election Systems—for misrepresenting the security capabilities of its product. He was co-founder and co-director of Voter Action, a nonprofit that sued to block the use of paperless touchscreen voting systems in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Pennsylvania in 2005 and 2006. From 2007 to 2014, he served as California’s Deputy Secretary of State for Voting Systems Technology and Policy. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of Verified Voting.

Dr. Philip Stark

Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences,
University of California, Berkeley

Conference Discussion Topic:
TBA

Philip B. Stark is Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the originator of risk-limiting audits, a rigorous method for ensuring that tabulation errors did not affect reported election outcomes–or correcting the outcomes if they are incorrect. He has worked closely with state and local election officials in California, Colorado, and Texas on audits, voting systems, legislation, and other issues related to election integrity. He won the John Gideon award for Election Integrity from the Election Verification Network and the Chancellor’s Award for Research in the Public Interest for his work on election audits. He is on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and on the Board of Directors of Verified Voting Foundation.

Dr. Virginia Martin

Elections Commissioner

Columbia County, NY

Conference Discussion Topic:

Central Hand Counting of Ballots

Dr. Virginia Martin was appointed Democratic Election Commissioner in Columbia County, New York in 2008. She received her PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in rhetoric and communication and has taught at both RPI and the University at Albany. Since the introduction of optical scanners in 2010, she and her Republican counterpart have conducted full hand counts of paper ballots in every election. They have developed an efficient, prompt, cost-effective, and fully secure bipartisan process that welcomes public oversight. Its modest funding is spent locally on appreciative and well-trained poll workers. Martin is frequently called upon by various organizations and the media to speak about her county’s vote-tabulation process.

Marilyn Marks

Biography coming soon

Dr. Chris Jerdonek

Mr. Jerdonek is President of the San Francisco Elections Commission, where he is serving in his fourth year. He also chairs San Francisco’s Open Source Voting System Technical Advisory Committee. He has been active in election reform for over 15 years. He works as a software developer by day and recently co-founded a start-up. He has a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Davis.

Emma Briant

Senior Lecturer at University of Essex

Conference Discussion Topic:
TBA

Dr. Briant’s presentation will be conducted remotely by video.

Dr. Emma L Briant is Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Associate Professor) in Journalism at University of Essex, UK. Dr. Briant specializes in researching and publishing on the topics of propaganda and international security, and media debates of politics, inequality and human rights. She has been working on several new projects including research examining Russian propaganda and her new co-authored book with Prof. Robert Entman: What’s Wrong with the Democrats? Media Bias, Inequality and the rise of Donald Trump. From 2013-2017 she was a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in Journalism Studies at University of Sheffield and spent 2016-2017 at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. She completed her PhD at Glasgow Media Group, University of Glasgow, Scotland in 2011 examining changes in Anglo-American counter-terrorism propaganda strategy since 9/11, work that became a book and led to many international invited talks, positive reviews and received recent media attention: Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global Change (Manchester University Press, 2015). Her publications with the Glasgow Media Group include academic research on media coverage of disability, which was discussed in Parliament in the UK and widely in the media, and a co-authored book examining media coverage of asylum in the UK and its impact on communities, which received many strong reviews: Bad News for Refugees (Pluto Press, 2013 with G. Philo and P. Donald).

Jonathan Simon

Author of Code Red

Conference Discussion Topic:
TBA

Jonathan Simon is the author of CODE RED: Computerized Election Theft and The New American Century and Executive Director of Election Defense Alliance, founded in 2006 to restore observable vote counting as the foundation of American democracy. He specializes in election forensics and has been an advocate for electoral integrity since 2002, authoring many papers and collaborating with numerous other researchers and organizations. He tweets @JonathanSimon14, blogs at www.CodeRed2016.com/blog, and can be reached at verifiedvote2004@aol.com.

Lulu Friesdat

New York Journalist and Filmmaker

Conference Discussion Topic:
Two-Tier Auditing

Lulu Friesdat is an Emmy award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on election reform and social change. She received a Best Documentary award for Holler Back — [not] Voting in an American Town, a film that explores systemic issues in our elections that discourage voter participation. Her network news experience includes assignments for CBS Evening News, Nightline, Sunday Morning, The Today Show, and Good Morning America. She produced profiles of Democratic
candidates for MSNBC, and has done documentary work with NBC. A two-time
recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award, her articles have been published on
Alternet and Salon.

Steven Rosenfeld

Journalist for Alternet

Conference Discussion Topic:Overview of Election Issues

Steven Rosenfeld has been an award-winning American journalist for nearly 30 years. He covers national affairs for AlterNet.org, including democracy issues. Previously, he has reported for National Public Radio, Monitor Radio and Vermont newspapers. He has written several books on U.S. elections, including an account of partisan voter suppression in Ohio in 2004’s presidential race, a profile of Vermont’s 1990 House race electing Socialist Bernard Sanders to Congress and a forthcoming book, Inside Job: How American Elections Are Still Rigged Against Voters.

Dr. David Jefferson

David Jefferson is a computer scientist who has worked at the intersection of public elections, computers, the Internet for over 20 years. He is on the boards of Verified Voting and the California Voter Foundation, and has served as an advisor to the last five California Secretaries of State. In 2004 he was coauthor of a strong critique of the SERVE Internet voting system proposed by the Department of Defense, leading to the program’s cancellation. He is frequently quoted on election security in the press, including an interview on CBS “60 Minutes”. He works at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he does research in supercomputing and cybersecurity.

Jan Bendor

Conference Discussion Topic:
2016 Recount in Michigan

Jan BenDor is a founding member of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Michigan Election Reform Alliance.org, which advocates for voter protection and comprehensive election security. A state-accredited elections administrator and election worker trainer, with lengthy experience as a deputy township Clerk, she volunteers as the Michigan Election Reform Alliance Statewide Coordinator. MERA is advancing a state bill for mandatory hand count audits of the vote, and is currently leading the effort to stop gerrymandering in Michigan, with a coalition of democratic rights advocates–Voters Not Politicians.com. Jan joined the Board of Directors of the National Election Defense Coalition in 2014. NEDC is working in Washington to enact bi-partisan legislation that would end all use of paperless voting machines, mandate manual audits, and put teeth into enforcement of federal laws against voter purging and suppression.

Karen McKim

Conference Discussion Topic:
2016 Recount in Wisconsin

Karen McKim has been coordinator of the Wisconsin Election Integrity Action Team (WisconsinElectionIntegrity.org) since its formation in 2012. The group focuses on management of elections technology, particularly as it relates to verification of computer-tabulated results. In October 2014, we achieved one important objective: Convincing the state elections agency to make it clear that local clerks can verify accuracy before they certify results. She has a master’s degree in public administration from the UW-Madison, and is retired from a 30-year career in state government, working in management auditing and quality assurance. In 2016, she ran for county clerk.

Mimi Kennedy

Progressive Democrats of America

Conference Discussion Topic:

The Path Forward

Mimi Kennedy has served as Advisory Board Chair for Progressive Democrats of America since its founding in 2004. She is an actress on stage (GREASE) TV (MOM, DHARMA & GREG) and film (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, IN THE LOOP) and writer (TAKEN TO THE STAGE; THE EDUCATION OF AN ACTRESS) She’s worked voluntarily for Election Integrity since 2002, helping found CEPN (California Election Protection Network) and PDA’s Election Issues Organizing team. She is a member of LA County Registrar’s Voter Outreach Committee and was invited to help establish principles for LA’s new voting system as a member of the Registrar’s Voting Systems Advisory Panel. Her non-negotiable was a human-readable paper ballot counted independently from the machine that produced it, and that is the new system’s design. She makes media appearances (Thom Hartmann, Harvey Wasserman, KPFK-Pacifica) to discuss election integrity developments and warn of new fraud risks like “Fraction Magic”, Bev Harris and Bennie Smith’s discovery of fractional voting programs in 80% of US private-company election systems.

Ray Lutz

Citizens OversightProjects: (COPs) Open Ballot Intiative

Conference Discussion Topic:
Ballot Images

Ray Lutz, trained as an engineer in electronics and software, founded Citizens Oversight in 2007 to enable civic engagement. Most recently, he has been active improving election integrity using the Snapshot Protocol and intense oversight of election processing. Sued San Diego County Registrar Michael Vu in 2016 for deficient auditing procedures, and won. Now appealing to extend to all counties. Also suing San Diego county for voted ballot accessed. Started the Open Ballot Initiative to use ballot images to provide election oversgiht. In 2011, Ray was arrested for attempting to register voters, and he sued the City and won.